But Where the Colors Are
by aeternium
Summary: But Obi-Wan never left the Jedi Order, Aayla was born twenty years earlier, and Padmé wasn't born on Tatooine. Three things that never happened before the rise of the empire, three consequences that never followed.


**already taken too much today**

Satine was in one of her Moods. Obi-Wan was not a particular fan of these Moods because when they occurred she tended to snap at him and narrow her eyes and occasionally throw plates. She closed herself off to him, and even the Force withdrew its alliance in measuring when she was ready to drop her guard once more, when she was ready to be held in his arms and have his fingers run through her blonde hair and be told _shh, my darling, it will be alright_.

To be fair, it was the Duke-Consort himself who often goaded these Moods into being. He and the Duchess had never particularly gotten along. It was not something they ever let the public see, but they brought it out of each other the moment they were in private. For a pacifist, she had a remarkably sharp tongue when it came to her husband, and he couldn't pass up the smallest chance to needle her. Perhaps the only thing that really kept them together was the fact that they were just as nauseatingly in love with each other as they had been for nearly forty years.

On this rarest of occasions, however, it was not towards him that her ire was directed.

"_Regional governors_," she shouted, slamming a datapad on Obi-Wan's desk. "The utter nerve of that man! Mandalore hasn't submitted to foreign rule in over a millennia, and it most certainly will not now. I have half a mind to go to Coruscant this very moment and tell him what I really – "

He let Satine rage on as he picked up the datapad, surprisingly undamaged from its inelegant arrival at his desk, and read the contents. Regional governors. Well. He had to hand it to the man, it seemed the Emperor had become the one person who could cause his wife's blood to boil even faster than he could.

If Obi-Wan didn't detest the man beyond even the foulest the galaxy had to offer, he might have sent him a thank-you gift.

But detest didn't quite cover it. It didn't go deep enough. Nothing did.

The Emperor had killed his family. Oh, maybe not directly, but surely by his orders. Even if it was years after he had left the Jedi Order that Obi-Wan could see them as his family, that's really what they were.

Had been. Master Yoda and Master Windu, the wise elders who passed on the wisdom of the ages. Master Dooku and Master Nu, the rather cranky grandparents, although it was only after he met Satine that Obi-Wan could see it. Master Qui-Gon… the closest thing he had ever known to a father. Even that young boy, Ana-something, Qui-Gon's new apprentice. His brother, he supposed, even if he never knew him. He would not have been a boy when he died, but a young man.

Because he _was_ dead. They all were, killed at the hands of the man who now drew as much of his wife's anger as his own.

" – and that _robe!_ I doubt he's changed out of that nasty thing in over twenty years, Obi-Wan, honestly. And he expects _me_ to comply with these imbecilic decrees? It's _insulting_, quite frankly, and I for one – "

She broke off rather abruptly, because her husband was no longer listening. He was rising up, and standing behind her, and pulling her in close, because this time it was not just Satine who needed to be calmed

**shrine to a love that never was**

"Oh, I'd forgotten you hadn't been introduced. This is Aayla Secura."

It transpired that this pilot whom he had heard so much about, and in such high regard, was, in fact, a woman. A Twi'lek woman, no less, and impossibly young. Her skin was a musky blue, a dusty sheen still clinging to it, her lekku securely bound behind her head. Something in Secura's dark eyes called out at him to remember something, though he could not say what exactly, and so put the thought away. Like all pilots of the Alliance, she wore the standard issue jacket and trousers, orange to mark her class. There was a practicality to Secura, in that she wore nothing to signify her status as Red Leader, and she had yet to remove her goggles from her head, despite having landed over an hour ago.

Secura shook his hand firmly and said, "Master Fisto, we finally meet."

"Finally?"

"Rumors about you have been circulating the place faster than a herd of gundarks." She grinned at the Nautolan's reaction. "People in this outfit have far too much time on their hands. I wouldn't worry about it."

"Well, that would depend on what they've been saying about me, wouldn't it?"

"I suppose it would."

"And…?" he prompted.

Secura paused a moment, as though trying to gauge the mere possibility before laying it out in the open. Then there it was, a slight nudge in the Force. It was only a moment, but it was enough. She was Force-sensitive, Kit had no doubt about it. If only she had been raised in the time before the Empire, when being born with such an aptitude did not pose a danger, because there were people to show them how to use their gift, to cultivate it to their advantage.

As though reading his thoughts (which she probably was, he reminded himself), Secura grinned. A wry, understanding grin that made Kit's central heart do a sudden turn on itself.

"Walk with me."

**because goodbye's too good a word**

An impossibility. A fluke. And if not, surely Shmi playing a joke on her – poor joke though it was, the scars of their brother's absence being pulled continually open to reveal the gaping wound left in their family every day, even now that it had been nearly fifteen years since she had last seen the frightened boy she was told was her twin brother. The lack of the boy's presence was never outright, never something to point one's finger on, as would have been the case with Shmi and her infectious laughter, or even Adi's penchant for holing herself up in her room, or indeed the habits of anyone in the hovel that had passed as a home all these years, anyone who had lived there long enough to really make a solid dent in the family dynamic.

The absence of one they all knew should be with them, loved and cared for as much as could be possible, crept instead on the little family in the oddest of moments. She knew that, for her mother, this occurred every time her father was mentioned. For Padmé, the death of her husband and the taking of her only son were inextricably bound. The loss of their child had been an impossible strike to both their hearts. They knew nothing of the world they had lost him to, only that what awaited him couldn't possibly be happiness. Here, in their hovel, they could at the very least provide a sanctuary for their children against the sufferings that awaited Tatooine slaves.

For Anakin Skywalker, the removal of his son (his wonderful, precocious, heartbreakingly talented, _only son_) was more than he could bear. In his anger and shame at having failed the only duty he had ever chosen for himself, he became unhinged. He had acted out against their master, the other slaves. Padmé had tended to the lashes in the dead of night so as not to upset their children (Shmi was, after all, only eight, and then there were the younger girls to think of). One day he didn't come home. Padmé assumed that he had been kept late as a punishment for poor work, and sent Leia to the forge with his dinner. She had been sent home with a message for her mother to divide the dinner amongst her children. Tomorrow, they would receive food for only five.

Leia and her sisters avoided the topic around their mother, but others – who were not so attuned to Padmé's moods and could not see the anguish muffled behind years of hardship in her expression – were not so kind. Anakin had been a popular man until he had taken a turn, and the community had grown up together, watched others grow up in turn. He had been a spirited boy, the subject of many an anecdote told by well-meaning neighbors. It was not only the chain of events that brought carefully monitored torment to Padmé. Leia knew that it was the stories themselves that plagued her with the same level of fervor. Anything said of her beloved Anakin's childhood was a constant reminder of what she had missed in her own son's life, inevitably becoming a reminder of how she had missed the entirety of his adolescence, and that he was now slowly passing into his adult life, while she only knew of the six year-old boy who had loved to draw, and had once thrown a plate at Adi without even touching it during an argument. Leia's parents had tried to hide the evidence of his unnatural gifts as her father had his whole life, but someone must have noticed and told someone. A man in a brown cloak came to see their master one night, and Luke was gone before his seventh birthday.

Once more she looked down at the image on the datapad, at the names bolded under the picture of an impossibly fierce duo – _Wanted for treason against the Galactic Empire: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker_. Shmi would never… she carried herself away at times, caught up in her own sheer brilliance, but she could never be so cruel. Besides, she had already left for work. It was nearly dawn. Adi's whereabouts were no mystery. Tala sat with their mother at the scrubbed wooden table, eyeing Leia's abandoned ahrisa, as she had finished her own.

_Luke_.

Perhaps there was some hope at last.


End file.
